Missing teen Brittany Clift has been safely located by LPD.

Per law enforcement sources she had been hiding out at a friend’s home since disappearing last Thursday. When approached by detectives Tuesday morning the 16-year-old fled on foot into the woods, but was taken into custody later in the day after calling her mother for a ride home.

Clift is in YDC, will appear before a judge today due to having run away three times during the last year. The friend whose house she was in cooperated with police; that teen’s parents were not home during the week due to a medical situation.

Whatever “help” her behavior was crying out for, hopefully now she’ll get it.   

During tax increase meetings, the Commissioner’s office admitted she has no legal control over a five-person board: it’s all done at the state level by legislators like Jeff Mullis.

Up until now, Mullis, Steve Tarvin, and John Deffenbaugh have refused to consider the idea or let the voters have a say in the board vs. commissioner issue, instead listening to the Commissioner and her wishes. (As sole commissioner, she of course doesn’t want to share power.)

That may soon change; LU’s Sole Commissioner Vote Petition has reached 1,400 signatures plus hundreds more who have signed the paper petition offline. If enough sign, local legislators will have no choice but to listen or be voted out along with Heiskell in 2016.

[The offline petition is now available to sign seven days a week 6 AM to 9 PM at Catlett Grocery on Round Pond Rd. Stop in and put down your name if you haven’t signed the online petition, and be sure to tell Bill thanks for standing up for change in Walker County.]

Also note from the video, Mr. Brooks (who wears a variety of job hats, including Walker Transit director, Development Authority director, and video camera operator for business meetings) says the Commissioner can’t have meetings at night when people could actually participate because she would have to pay overtime.

They have no problem with “overtime” during the Commissioner’s weekly UCTV Hee-Haw Dumpster Fire TV show, and had no problem making county employees work overtime earlier this month setting up and working the County Fair, or last fall when everybody with a county job worked overtime for weeks setting up the failed Civil War reenactment.     

Eyewitnesses report a minor accident Monday at the county fire station in Chickamauga: an ambulance drove through the station’s garage door.

No pics of the wreck but here’s the station Tuesday with the door covered up.   

Under Georgia law, every city must have a multi-member council. Some have councils with mayors, some have councils with a chair, but all of Georgia’s 535 incorporated towns have more than one person in charge: from Atlanta with half a million residents all the way down to tiny Edge Hill in Glascock County, where only 25 people live.

When a city cannot seat enough councilors to have a “quorum” on a regular basis its charter is dissolved, because you need a handful of people to govern with accountability and make decisions that benefit the citizens instead of a sole person in charge. That’s why cities and counties in other states also have more than one elected leader, by law.

But thanks to legislative oversight, Georgia doesn’t require COUNTIES to have more than one leader. Why does it make sense for a massive county with 70,000+ residents to have one leader when a city like Edge Hill (or Lyerly, with 540 residents) is required to have five people in charge? It doesn’t.

We can’t change the flaws in state law, but we can keep those mistakes from continuing here. Sign the Sole Commissioner Vote Petition and tell YOUR lawmakers who work for YOU that we finally need a vote on representative government in Walker County.         

LPD is seeking information on the whereabouts of a missing 16-year-old girl:

“Brittany Clift was reported as a runaway on 09/18/2014 by her mother. Brittany was last seen by her mother in her bedroom around 10:30pm on the night of the 18th. Brittany is described as a white female, height 5’03”, 107lbs, has blonde hair and hazel eyes. No clothing description could be given at the time of the report. The LaFayette Police Department is asking that anyone who may have information on the whereabouts of Brittany to please contact the LaFayette Police Deapartment, Walker County 911 or the case officer Detective B. Mullis at 706-639-1540 or 706-375-7810.”     

Friday LPD finally began investigating the suspected arson fire of Mac Waters’ empty home on Culberson Ave. LPD detective Steele says the department previously couldn’t get permission to enter the house and check because he wrote the family’s phone number down wrong.   

LU’s Sole Commissioner Vote Petition continues making waves online and off, and has been tentatively endorsed by at least one of the four decisionmakers it targets.

Volunteers have seen success gathering signatures door to door, hitting a few neighborhoods in LaFayette with plans to expand through the next week. A fixed location for signing the petition was set up downtown Thursday and also saw moderate success.

Anyone wishing to sign the paper petition will have another opportunity to do so today, from 10:30 to 12:30 and again from 6 to 7 tonight, in front of Campbell Surveying on the West side of LaFayette square.

The petition has gotten attention from GA House District 1 candidate Tom McMahan, who says he supports the petition and the inherent right for people to address government leaders. McMahan doesn’t take a side on the form of government Walker County should have, but says he wants the people to have a say in it one way or the other.

He promises here to set up the resolution asked for in the petition if it reaches 1,600 signatures – a little over 300 more than it has now. That’s IF he’s elected, of course.

“If, before the November 4th election day, 1600 valid, verified registered voting citizens of Walker County sign a petition, either on the blog or at my website, or through other valid means, as your next state representative, I will bring the local referendum question to the state House for the citizens of Walker County to vote on. I do this, not to take a side on the issue itself, but because I am committed to ALWAYS allowing the voice of the people to be heard.”

That’s all petition organizers are asking for, from Senator Mullis, Rep. Tarvin, and McMahan or his opponent John Deffenbaugh.. A chance to vote on this issue. Let the people decide, for the first time in decades. Unfortunately McMahan is the only one willing to pay attention, so far anyway. More signatures are needed.             

The city’s Caboose Park on Patton St. in West LaFayette opened last summer to great applause, but in the time since has deteriorated into a campground for homeless drunks.

LU reported earlier this year on a family trying to use the sandbox out there and finding it full of glass.

Here’s a photo from last Friday of LPD finally arresting one of the bums living around the bridge in that area. MAYBE increased attention from the police department will make the site family friendly again, but don’t hold your breath.   

The Underground’s Sole Commissioner petition – now signed by nearly 1,100 people – has become talk of the town. An article in Sunday’s Times Free Press about the petition brought more attention to it and the cause of ending sole commissioner government in Walker County.

The reporter spoke with Senator Jeff Mullis, one of the four decision-makers targeted by the petition. Mullis apparently dismissed the hundreds of his constituents who signed the petition, saying the petition lacks “real clout.”

If our elected State Senator isn’t going to take the petition seriously, maybe the voters should also start calling him? His listed home number is (706) 375-1776. If you’ve signed the petition or plan to do so, consider also giving him a ring so he knows you exist and have a voice in this.

Walker County’s current (hopefully last) sole commissioner, Bebe Heiskell, didn’t provide a statement for the newspaper but DID comment on her* Facebook page, essentially calling everyone who signed the petition a moron:

(*Heiskell has stated she knows nothing about computers. Her Facebook represents her but is likely run by one or two county employees.)

In 1940 we threw out commission government because a commission ran the county into debt and couldn’t be voted out of office. That sounds like the situation we’re in now, and a good reason to change back: the county is in debt and the sole commissioner, who acts like she hates us all, can’t be voted out of office.

“They believed that it would be easier to vote one person out..”

Well looks like they were wrong on that. Since sole commissioner started in 1940 Walker County has had only seven commissioners. Two of the last three have served at least four terms, and one of those was in office for 24 years.

In 1940 many counties were run by sole commissioners or judges. It was doable then because you had fewer people to represent. In 1940 the county was also recovering from the Great Depression and heading into a World War. Walker County had about 31,000 people in the 1940 census – now we have over 70,000.

The time for sole commissioner has long since passed. It’s as outdated as segregation, living in tar-paper shacks, chopping cotton, and a lot of other things from the same era we don’t need a return to.           

Investigation into probable arson fire at drug smuggler Mac Waters’ former home stalls because nobody will give state inspectors permission to enter the Culberson Ave. structure.

Family members insist they did give permission and blame LPD for not moving the investigation further.   

Approximately 50 people attended Thursday morning’s tax meeting. Commissioner Heiskell signed the tax increase into law at 11:30, ignoring the wishes of every single person who attended any of the three public hearings.

No video has emerged from the most recent meeting, but this clip from the previous gathering shows the attitude Heiskell had towards her constituents, and some of the better questions they asked of her:

Here’s a good recap of the attitude and atmosphere during the first week’s tax increase meetings: The people wanted to talk, the Commissioner wanted to leave – and did.

During all three county tax meetings, anyone wishing to speak was required to put down their name. That’s nothing new for public meetings in the county, but this time deputies were making people sign up and handling the list.

The meetings also had extra deputies on hand, supposedly for security, but it’s all about intimidation. Make people afraid to speak up or ask questions while the elected leader who supposedly works for us does whatever the hell she wants.

But those tactics didn’t work. Bravo to those, like Evelyn in the video above, who stood up and spoke their mind even with Steve Wilson staring at them and taking notes. Bravo to those who let Bebe glare at them and glared right back while they asked her questions she couldn’t or wouldn’t answer.

The tax increase passed anyway, there was no way it wouldn’t with a single person in charge, but this was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. The people are ready to do whatever it takes to remove “leaders” from their unearned positions and end the broken system that allows them to steamroll citizens, ethics, and laws. Bebe gets her money but her actions will end her career and take the broken system down with it.         

Citizen satisfaction with county government has reached a new low. Heiskell’s tax increase, leadership dismissing citizen concerns, and continual waste of public funds reveal how broken the local system is.

Walker County has been under sole commissioner government since 1940. While that may have been a workable solution 74 years ago, the time for one person running a county has long since passed.

The only way to be done with sole commissioner government is for the local delegation to Atlanta (Jeff Mullis, Steve Tarvin, and either John Deffenbaugh or John McMahan depending) to pass a resolution to change the county charter OR pass one allowing us to vote on changing it.

People have been suggesting impeachment of the current commissioner, or a “recall” of some kind. Both of those have high legal hurdles; state law is intentionally structured to make a recall or impeachment almost impossible.

Even if someone were to successfully recall or impeach the current commissioner, she would be replaced by another sole commissioner (likely one of her current employees) who wouldn’t be much better.

The biggest problem is the system, the structure, that allows one person – any one person – to run a government the size of Walker County. Sign this petition and let your local legislators know they can help us make this change, or we’ll vote them out in 2016 along with Heiskell.

If you’re tired of being treated like a mushroom, tired of the way things have been done here in recent years, sign this petition to let those legislators know you want them to act and let US have a say in how county government is run.

The petition launched Thursday evening and has already been signed by over 700 people, citizens of Walker County seeking to fix six decades of dysfunction and abuse. Please consider joining them.

Some great comments on the petition. Even if you aren’t going to sign it, check out what’s being said.